Tuesday, October 1, 2013

It's October, bring on the ghosties and other creepy things!

October brings with it Halloween, and as far as reading goes, Halloween means a huge stack of creepy, dread-inducing, and scary tomes. I hope the ones I've chosen for this month are going to be good. I love reading a good ghost story, supernatural tale, weird fiction, or horror novel but I prefer not to go down the roads of splatter, torture, or anything gross. Nor do I care at all for zombies. I'm probably the only person on the planet that isn't crazy about zombies -- I just don't see their point. Okay, so they're dead, they come back, they eat people and it gets all gross so I won't read about them anyway. And zombie romance? Vampire romance? Ewww. Forget that. I like my horror cerebral -- I like imagining it all in my head, although sometimes that can backfire on me, and in one instance, caused me not to sleep for a couple of days. The story that kept me up with lights on is a story called "Beach Head," by Daniel Le Moal. I originally read it in Volume One of Ellen Datlow's series The Best Horror of the Year ; when I wrote about it I noted that there is a line at which horror becomes no longer fun for me -- and this story crossed it. In the strictest sense of the word, I was indeed horrified, but this one went well beyond my comfort zone. I give much credit to the writer: the images his writing conjured were extremely vivid, but downright depressing and I hope to god I never see another story like this one again. I won't deny that the story was very well written, but there are just some things I don't want to see in my head. On the other hand, I love reading supernatural stories because they are, imho, a lot like crime fiction. Well-written ghost stories set up a situation that leads to a number of questions that you want answered; a good writer keeps the tension going just long enough until you have a solution of some sort. The best horror stories are the ones where the author slowly builds and intensifies a certain feeling of dread before things get resolved one way or another.

So, on the horror/supernatural stack this month so far (but this can change at any time):

John Boyne, This House is Haunted(which I've already read but I'll give it a reread and I'll be discussing it shortly)

Graham Joyce, The Year of the Ladybird: A Ghost Story

Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

Dan Simmons, The Abominable

There are also a couple of literary novels I want to get through this month -- The House of Journalists, by Tim Finch and The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri -- as well as new crime: Arnaldur Indridason's latest (which I'm reading now) called Strange Shores, and two nonfiction books, The Brothers, by Stephen Kinzer and Stanley Crouch's Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker. That's the plan anyway. We'll see what actually happens!

About Me

bottom line: I love to read.
I use this space to record and to talk about what I've read during the year. You won't see descriptions like "lush, lyrical prose" here ... I'm just an ordinary reader person who wants to share a love of the written word. I don't really "review" -- that's for the pros. I just offer opinions. Feel free to comment any time.